Conception
By 1978, Phil Collins had been part of Genesis for eight years. After spending the first five of those years as a drummer, he reluctantly accepted the role of front man of the group following original vocalist Peter Gabriel's departure shortly after the release of their conceptual progressive rock album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The first album where Collins took over was 1976's A Trick of the Tail, which while still featuring the same type of progressive rock that the group had been recording since its 1969 debut, also featured several ballads and softer rockers. Their 1978 album, ...And Then There Were Three..., featured their first crossover hit, "Follow You, Follow Me". The song and the subsequent album were the beginning of the group's breakaway from their progressive rock past into a more commercial, radio-friendly pop sound which alienated older fans but brought out newer ones. Following ...And Then There Were Three... and a world tour across America, Europe, and Japan, Collins took a leave of absence from the group to deal with his troubled family life. Collins' first wife filed for divorce in 1979 and left Collins in the home they shared in England by himself. Collins reportedly stayed in his house for weeks working on songs that reflected his personal life. Initially, Collins did not want to record them for an album until Atlantic Records, Genesis' record label in America, and Virgin Records, his label overseas, offered him a solo contract. Collins would base the majority of Face Value on the divorce he had endured. Some of Collins' material that he wrote for Face Value made its way onto Genesis' subsequent follow-up, Duke. Collins' radio-friendly vocals helped to make Duke a major success.
Read more about this topic: Face Value (album)
Famous quotes containing the word conception:
“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Into all that becomes something inward for men, an image or conception as such, into all that he makes his own, language has penetrated ... logic must certainly be said to be the supernatural element which permeates every relationship of man to nature, his sensation, intuition, desire, need, instinct, and simply by so doing transforms it into something human, even though only formally human, into ideas and purposes.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)